Global Warming

Global Warming

Introduction

Global warming is one of the greatest environmental challenges that the world is facing today. Global warming is one of the most talked about issue of the planet. Every country and every nation are suffering from the warming of the planet, which has been continuing at a unpredictable rate since the past few decades. Global warming is the rise in the earth's temperature that has been taking place since the end of the nineteenth century. The rise in temperature is to continue in the coming years at a faster pace than it has been till date. The temperature of the surface of the earth has increased by 0.8°C, approximately 1.4 °F in the past century. The two third if this increase has occurred since the world entered into the 1980s (Bily, 2006). Such an alarming warming of the climate in such a short span if time is unequivocal. Scientists are more than ninety percent sure of the fact that this warming of the planet is occurring because of the greenhouse gases that are produced by the humans at an increasing rate day. The effects of global warming are visible in the world every day when there are increased number of floods and the danger of many animals and plants species that are on the verge of becoming extinct. Global warming is affecting the health of the people and animals on the earth. It is also devastating the life of the plants on the planet. The world economy is also suffering from the effects of global warming every single day. This essay will look into the history of global warming, its causes and solutions.

Discussion

History

Svante Arrhenius was a Swedish scientist who claimed that he burning of fossil fuel can lead to the increased amounts of global warming. He proposed a relationship between the temperature of the earth and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. During his research, he found out that the average temperature of the earth due to the infrared absorption capacity of carbon dioxide and the water vapors (Gaughen, 2005). This phenomenon was called the greenhouse effect. Arrhenius suggested that the temperature of the earth will rise by 5 degrees Celsius if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles. He, along with another scientist Thomas Chamberlin calculated that the activities of the humans will lead to a warmer globe due to the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The research that the two scientists did was a byproduct of the research on the causes of the ice ages.

After the discoveries of Chamberlin and Arrhenius, the topic of global warming stayed neglected for a long time. The researchers and the scientists used to think that the influences of the human activities on earth are not such significant as are the natural forces like ocean circulation and solar activity. It was also one of the prevailing views that the oceans are a great sink of carbon dioxide, and this is going to cancel the effects ...